Morning Shinbun Monday December 6

E-mails from the front lines of the Iraq war

E-mails from sources in Iraq describe the daily carnage; these terse missives are an almost poetic chronicle of the war. No commas. No names. Is punctuation necessary when meaning is so clear?

By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times

December 6, 2010

Reporting from Cairo – They arrive nearly every day, these sad, strange e-mails from Iraq.

They are unsentimental and hard, gathered by stringers scattered across a country at war. They’re often tough to follow, terse poems with broken rhythms and words landing in wrong places. But there’s an unadorned power that speaks to things beyond style and grammar.

“An IP source said that some gunmen assassinated yesterday evening staff brigadier general in the Iraqi army and his wife in Tobchi (west Baghdad) while he was driving his car… both were killed instantly.”

Climate change threat to tropical forests ‘greater than suspected’

Met Office Hadley Centre warns of drought risk and role of deforestation in global warming

John Vidal The Guardian, Monday 6 December 2010  

The chances of northern Europe facing a new ice age, or of catastrophic sea-level rises of almost four metres that swamp the planet over the next century, have been ruled out by leading scientists.

But the risk of tropical forests succumbing to drought brought on by climate change as well as the acceleration of methane emissions from melting permafrost, is greater, according to the Met Office Hadley Centre, in its latest climate change review.

USA

Bush Tax-Cut Deal With Jobless Aid Said to Be Near

 

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and CARL HULSE

Published: December 5, 2010  

WASHINGTON – White House officials and Congressional Republicans said Sunday they were closing in on a deal to temporarily continue the Bush-era tax cuts at all income levels, while bitterly frustrated Democratic Congressional leaders began exploring whether they would have the votes for such a package.

A day after the Senate rejected President Obama’s preferred tax plan, officials said the broad contours of a compromise were in focus.

Rather than extending the tax rates only on income described by Democrats as middle class – up to $250,000 a year for couples and $200,000 for individuals – the deal would also keep the rates for higher earners, probably for two years. In return, Republicans said they would probably agree to extend jobless aid for the long-term unemployed.

Unusual methods helped ICE break deportation record, e-mails and interviews show  



By Andrew Becker

Center for Investigative Reporting

For much of this year, the Obama administration touted its tougher-than-ever approach to immigration enforcement, culminating in a record number of deportations.  

But in reaching 392,862 deportations, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement included more than 19,000 immigrants who had exited the previous fiscal year, according to agency statistics. ICE also ran a Mexican repatriation program five weeks longer than ever before, allowing the agency to count at least 6,500 exits that, without the program, would normally have been tallied by the U.S. Border Patrol.

Europe

French court to rule on Concorde crash

The trial reopened old questions over whether European engineers or an American company, Continental Airlines, was responsible for the July 2000 crash of the European jet

James Meikle guardian.co.uk, Monday 6 December 2010 02.59 GMT  

A French court will today declare whether who, if anyone, is to blame for the crash of a Concorde airliner outside Paris which killed 113 people more than 10 years ago.

Its verdict, after a four-month trial earlier this year, will determine whether European engineers or a US company and two of its staff were responsible for the disaster which sounded the death knell for the first era of suspersonic commercial flight.

The crash of the Air France aircraft, which killed all 109 people on board, mostly German tourists, and four on the ground, prompted a decade of judicial investigation before the hearing at Pointoise, northwest of Paris.

Greek police arrest six for suspected terrorist links  

Police in Greece have detained six people suspected of having links with terrorism, after a series of raids. Two suspects were wanted for connections with a group that sent parcel bombs to European leaders last month.  

Terrorism | 06.12.2010  

Greek police arrested six people on suspicion of having links with terrorism after a series of raids across the country.

The five men and a woman, aged between 21 and 30, were detained after police uncovered a haul of weapons, police chief Lefteris Oikonomou told a press briefing on Sunday.

Two of the individuals arrested were wanted for alleged connections with the left-wing group Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei. The organization is believed to be responsible for a series of parcel bombs sent to international embassies and European leaders, including Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, last month.

Middle East

Saudi Arabia is ‘biggest funder of terrorists’

 



By Rob Hastings  Monday, 6 December 2010

Saudi Arabia is the single biggest contributor to the funding of Islamic extremism and is unwilling to cut off the money supply, according to a leaked note from Hillary Clinton.

The US Secretary of State says in a secret memorandum that donors in the kingdom still “constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide” and that “it has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority”.

Iran talks set to open in Geneva    

Tehran to discuss its nuclear programme with global powers, a day after announcing advance in uranium enrichment.  

Last Modified: 06 Dec 2010  

Iran will hold talks on its controversial nuclear programme with global powers on Monday, a day after announcing an important advance in its capability to enrich uranium.

In what seemed a clear attempt to send a message before the talks, Tehran announced on Sunday that it had mined and enriched its first domestic uranium yellowcake, the raw material needed to produce highly-enriched uranium.

The announcement has been widely interpreted as a signal that Iran will not back down over its nuclear programme, which the West believes aims to build nuclear weapons despite Tehran’s insistence that its plans are peaceful.  

Asia

How a kind offer led to death sentence for blasphemy

As the mood grows uglier in the Punjab, one hardline cleric offers a reward for the killing of Catholic woman Aasia Bibi  

MARY FITZGERALD, Foreign Affairs Correspondent in Islamabad The Irish Times – Monday, December 6, 2010

THE STORY of how Aasia Noreen became the first woman to be sentenced to death for blasphemy in Pakistan began more than a year ago with a bitter quarrel in a field in deepest Punjab.

Noreen, one of several women farm workers toiling in the searing June heat, went to fetch water to drink. When she offered some to her co-workers, they refused. The reason? Noreen is a Christian, and, in their eyes, the water was therefore unclean.

What followed was an argument about her faith and theirs. Noreen’s family say the women had previously pestered her to convert. Whatever may have been said in the field that day soon trickled back to a local mullah who roused a baying mob after he concluded the illiterate mother of five had committed blasphemy.

Lashkar planned to kill Narendra Modi: Wikileaks

 

Vishwa Mohan, TNN, Dec 6, 2010

NEW DELHI: Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba had made elaborate plans in June last year to assassinate Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, according to one of the American diplomatic cables made public by whistleblower website WikiLeaks.

The cable identifies a Pakistani Lashkar member, Shafiq, as the mastermind of the plot that was to be executed by a module led by an Indian Lashkar operative, Hussein.

The hit job was to be carried out by one Sameer, an India-based Lashkar terrorist.

Africa

Mbeki in Côte d’Ivoire as tensions rise



ABIDJAN, CÔTE D’IVOIRE Dec 06 2010 06:57  

Former South African president Thabo Mbeki stepped in to try to head off violence after both the incumbent, Gbagbo, and his old rival, Alassane Ouattara, swore themselves in as president.

Gbagbo (65) has defied international calls to cede power after the United Nations recognised Ouattara as the winner of the November 28 run-off vote.

But after Mbeki, sent by the 53-member African Union (AU), held emergency talks with the two on Sunday, Ouattara upped the ante.

He called on the mediator to demand Gbagbo quit, as his own allies declared they had formed a new government.

Latin America

Dozens feared buried in Colombia landslide  

At least 50 people are feared to have been buried by a landslide in the Colombian city of Medellin.

The BBC 6 December 2010  

Rescue workers with sniffer dogs are at the scene and said they had managed to rescue seven people so far.

One body has been recovered from beneath the tonnes of rubble, said disaster management officials.

Landslides are common in the Colombian Andes region – the latest was triggered by the heaviest rains in the country in four decades.

The Red Cross says 176 people have been killed by the rains this year and thousands have had to leave their homes.

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